


Spring Cleaning

by Anna__S



Category: The Mindy Project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 13:04:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2389259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna__S/pseuds/Anna__S
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That long, cold spring he rereads her letters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spring Cleaning

**Author's Note:**

> This is set during that happy time between Be Cool and Danny & Mindy.

   

He knows a little something about breaking things. He knows about pounding his fist into flesh, slamming his foot through plaster. And he knows, precisely, intimately, about what families look like when they break. So he shouldn’t be surprised that he broke them so easily.

But he is. 

He assumed this would just be another skip in the record of an already tumultuous friendship. Just one of those weird temporary descents into lust. 

When Jeremy ended things off with her, she was pissed and in his face.  He expects that; he wants to bear the brunt of her temper; for her to storm into his office and yell at him in a high-pitched voice the first time he flirts back with the cute nurse in the prenatal clinic.  Danny expects her to hoard his possessions, to force concessions out of him to get back his favorite undershirt and his best frying pan. Instead, she puts together a box of his things and leaves it in his office without a note or a word. 

She’s never been careful around him before. And he doesn’t know what to do with it.  

In the past, he was never the one who had to make the effort. It was always Mindy striding into his office, always there, always nagging, pushing, pulling, until at some point he realized his life didn’t look the same. It didn’t fit into the same spaces anymore.

He tries offering her lunch, and gets a polite, _no, thanks_ , _I already have this delicious salad,_ he asks her what she thinks of his new button down, and she tells him, _fine,_ he tells her that he watched You’ve Got Mail the night before and it was terrible, and what kind of idiot emails with a stranger, and she nods at him, absently. 

Today, she walks in wearing bright pink head to toe. Even her fingernails are a blinding shade of pink.

“You look like a Pepto-Bismol bottle,” he says as she steps past him. But even this tried and true standby doesn’t work.

Mindy’s eyes dart from side to side, like she’s trapped, her chin not totally steady.  

“Says the guy wearing dad jeans,” she says eventually, but it’s half-hearted. 

After Mindy disappears into her office, Peter kicks him in the shin.  “What’s wrong with you, dude? Seriously, were you born in a barn?” he asks, his voice low, but somehow still a shout. 

“Nothing’s wrong with me! This is what we do,” Danny stammers, annoyed with himself, annoyed with her, and annoyed most of all with Peter.

He stalks into his office and slams the door loudly behind him. The rattle is satisfying, but not satisfying enough. He wishes he could take the door of its hinges; he wants to feel something shatter and splinter in his hands.  

When he closes his eyes, all he can picture is glass, breaking everywhere.  

  

* * *

 

Spring arrives late that year. March comes in like a lion and out like a lion. 

Danny waits for the weather to turn, as if maybe the change of seasons will change something else. It adds to his sense of waiting, of the in-between.  

Despite that, he does his spring-cleaning the same weekend in April he always does and it takes twice as long as usual. He keeps discovering new gummy stains on his pillows and half eaten candies under his couch, even a wad of gum stuck on the inside leg of his coffee table; undoubtedly souvenirs from Mindy.  

And halfway through, he finds her old letters, stacked neatly in the bottom of his desk.  

He sits down and one-by-one, he rereads them all, carefully, slowly, as if perhaps he will find something new in the familiar words. Or maybe he just craves the rhythm of her voice. He’s started to miss things he never could’ve imagined missing.

She always opened her letters with the same sunny _Danny!_ and finished with a laundry list of questions:

 _I can’t believe you replaced me so quickly.  Tell me about the new doctor.  Morgan mentioned something about Jeremy putting on a few pounds? Okay, actually, what he said was that Jeremy has become a porker. Please provide details._  

_Tell me everything._

 

* * *

 

The day after he breaks things off with Sally and gets a croissant flung at his head for his efforts, Danny knocks on Peter’s office.

“Come in,” Pete calls out. He’s leaning back in his chair with his feet kicked up on his desk, and Danny is pretty sure he’s wearing sneakers. He suppresses a crack about Peter’s level of professionalism, since the whole point of this visit is to make peace.

“Oh, it’s you,” says Peter, swinging his feet back onto the ground and displaying the same level of enthusiasm that he would if a roach wandered into his office.  “I heard the big news.” 

“Look man, I’m sorry about Sally,” he says. “It was…I never should’ve started dating her.”  

Peter takes this as the concession it is. “It’s okay bro, I mean, I warned her that you were still hung up on another chick and she chose to take the plunge. Classic Sally. She doesn’t always have the best taste in guys.”

“Okay, that’s offensive, Pete.” He’s not sure which charge to defend himself against first. “And I’m…I’m not,” he says, lamely.

“You’re not hung up on Mindy? Yeah, naw, I’m pretty sure you are.” 

“I don’t know,” he says and immediately feels like more of an idiot, because this seems like the kind of thing he should know. At the very least he should know before _Pete_ of all people. 

“Well, maybe you should think about it, and when you figure it out, you should you know, _do_ something about it. Sack up.”

The smug grin Peter gives him floods him with irritation, mostly because he might be right.  Danny crosses his arms across his chest. 

“All right, buddy, ceasefire granted. You hungry?”

Danny nods. 

 

* * *

 

_Tell me how you’re doing. I still can’t believe you live in New Jersey. Have you seen the Jersey Shore, do you even know what you're getting yourself into? Anyway, it seems wrong, somehow.  Like if Teresa Giudice moved to Iowa. Or to put it in language you’ll understand: if the Yankees moved to Fenway Park. Tell me about the new house._

_And if you’re not going to do that, you promised you’d keep me up to date on my shows, and so far you’ve refused to answer any of my questions about the new season of Army Wives._

 

* * *

 

After his second false alarm of the day, Danny is finally heading home.  He walks through the hospital hallways at a slow pace, not lingering, just taking his time. He peeks into the closest room, keeping an eye out for the dark splash of her hair. 

As he walks around the curve, Peter jogs past him, coming to a sudden cartoonish stop when he spots Danny. 

“Whoa, where are you headed?” he asks.

“Mindy needs a second pair of hand in her delivery,” Pete says, looking him over carefully. “You wanna step in?”

Danny hesitates and in that beat, Peter rolls his eyes. “Look, I’ve had the worst day so it would be a favor to both of us.”

“Okay. Fine. Just this once, ” he says, doing his best to infuse his voice with irritation as Pete points him towards the right surgery room. 

When he walks in, Mindy glances up and seems relieved; for once she’s too focused to let the shutters fall across her eyes. She gestures with her shoulders at her left, and he shifts to her side, watching the easy confidence of her movements.

Two hours later, and there’s a squalling baby girl and two happy parents.

The loose pieces of her hair that have slipped from her bun are stuck to her face with sweat, but she’s beaming.

“Thanks Danny, I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Yes, you could’ve,” he says, softly. He squeezes Mindy’s shoulder, leaving a handprint-shaped smear of mucus and fluids behind on her scrubs.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she says in her chipper voice. “But it was still nice to have the help.”  She smiles at him and it’s not the brittle half-smile he’s been on the receiving end of so often recently.  

“We make a good team,” he says. 

“Birthing machines, that’s us,” she says.

 Danny clears his throat. He wants, he wants to ask her to grab dinner, or to just walk with him, slowly, back to the locker room, to keep her in his orbit somehow, as long as he can.  But she’s already headed towards the sink to soap up her hands and forearms. 

“See you tomorrow, Danny.  And don’t forget to wash up. You look like you just fought an alien and lost.” 

 

* * *

 

 _I miss New York. And not just the food, although that too.  I miss how it makes you feel so small and so important at the same time, because you’re a piece of something that’s so big._ _Like anything could happen because everything happens there._

 

* * *

 

She leaves his other apartment without a word, simply slides the key under his door.  Unmarked, no ceremony, no explanation, just like the box of his things.

But this go around he needs a new ending. For the first time since Christina tore through his life, it suddenly feels like not enough.  He doesn’t know how to resign himself to this. 

He can’t remember the exact moment he realized he loved her.  It was like learning to swim. He absorbed all the elements: how to kick, how to float, how to hold his breath. He had all the pieces, but he hadn’t known how to put them together. And then one day, he just could. 

But his body knew long before he did. He’s been tracking every move she made for as far back as he could remember.  Apparently, he’d forgotten what it felt like to be in love, but the muscle-memory remained. Maybe, if he just starts talking to her and let his lips move the words he needs to say will somehow appear. Maybe his body will know that too. 

Or maybe, he will end up saying all of the wrong things in all of the wrong ways again. He’s not fluent in Mindy anymore; probably he never was. 

He kicks the key and it skitters violently across the paneled floor, landing underneath his desk.  Danny follows its path, his eye immediately drawn to the pile of letters still there and picks up the page on top. 

_Danny!_

_You wouldn’t believe the work I’m doing here. Not that what I did in New York wasn’t meaningful, but I’m really changing people’s lives here. It’s pretty incredible. Plus, I only showered once this week. And there was only two-in-one shampoo and conditioner available. Pretty good for a spoiled Manhattan doctor, right? (Not that I think I’m spoiled, but I’m pretty sure that’s the word you used)._

 

He’s suddenly furious. Look at all these words she wasted on him when it didn’t matter; when they were still learning their way around each other.  His thumbnail jabs through the paper and he realizes his hands are shaking. 

He picks up a pen and starts to write. 

 

_Mindy,_

_It’s been a really weird, long spring. I wish you would let me tell you about it. I don’t know what you need to hear, but I want to say it. If this were anybody else, you’d be helping me find the right words. All I know is that you’ve made my life so messy.  And I_

He pauses, his pen still hovering over the pad. This feels like cowardice; even worse it feels like cowardice that won’t work.  

Maybe there’s no truth that will change her mind. Maybe it doesn’t matter that he’s a little better when he’s with her, his heart a little lighter, his smile a little faster. He’s never been good at loving people, and nobody knows that better than her. 

Chewing on the tip of the pen, he wonders what she would do if she were here; what hopelessly optimistic and deeply flawed plan she would conceive, what boneheaded movie she would base her life upon this time.

What he really needs is a clean slate, but that’s the one thing he’s never had. 

He pulls the pad closer to him and keeps writing.

 

* * *

 

 _Tell me about fall, Danny. Tell me about the leaves falling from the trees._ _Complain about how it’s getting cold and the air conditioner is still too drafty in your office. Rant about the pumpkin creamers the hospital should be putting out any day now._

_Talk to me._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to a prompt that asked for Danny/Mindy, and the line: he can’t remember when he fell in love with her. This meets like 80% of those requirements. Hopefully, almost counts in fanfic.


End file.
